Jambusters (23 page)

The war broke out just as the autumn crops were ripening. Word reached the National Federation’s headquarters that fruit from all over the country was going to waste because the bumper harvest could not be gathered in owing to disruption caused by the outbreak of hostilities. Miss Farrer at national headquarters immediately contacted the Ministry of Food and secured 430 tons of sugar, worth £13,000 (£450,000 today). She then wrote to county chairmen telling them that a quantity of sugar had been secured from the government for the purpose of preserving as much surplus fruit as possible and this could be ordered by institutes direct from London. The minimum quantity supplied by headquarters was one hundredweight or 50 kilograms at a price of 27s 6d and at this stage there was no maximum quantity, though members had to undertake that the sugar was used for preservation purposes only. Within a fortnight the price of sugar had risen to 30 shillings per hundredweight and institutes were ordering by the ton. Edith’s institute ordered two hundred-weight.

The first wave of jam-making was done on an entirely ad hoc basis, village by village, organised either by institute members or other women in the village who had the space in their kitchens to offer jam-making facilities. Large pots and pans were borrowed and lent, jars and bottles collected from friends and relatives, ripe fruit was spotted and picked from gardens, orchards, trees and hedgerows. Estimates varied about how much jam was made in that first wave but the WI claimed that it had saved some 450 tons of fruit from rotting.

In November 1939 the editor of
Home & Country
was triumphant: ‘After that, there could be no doubt that the institute movement is very much alive. One of its original purposes was to help in the production and preserving of food: the very first Institute effort of this new war carried on that purpose.’
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Another
correspondent agreed, writing proudly: ‘It is not too much to say that the Headquarters sugar campaign won, for the WIs, the first round of the war. It came at what learned persons call the psychological moment, when many of us saw no future for the Women’s Institutes but a prolonged work-party. What women faced with panic need most is an organized common effort and something friendly and sensible in their hands. The National Federation gave us both together.’
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Mrs Blagg, the president of Burton Joyce and Bulcote WI, in Nottinghamshire, spoke for many institutes when she wrote in October: ‘Our 4 cwt has gone to about twenty homes. We had quite an enjoyable afternoon weighing it, and our members gladly paid more than they were asked – we got it before the Budget advanced the price and by this means we have obtained £2 to help with our sewing for evacuees and hospital supplies. The forethought of the NFWI seems to me to supply an excellent answer to the often repeated cry, “Why do we need national and county federations?”’

With a common aim and united strength, highlighted by Lady Denman as two of the WI’s strongest points, the jam-making of autumn 1939 proved the extraordinary efficiency and speed with which the WI could galvanise its members and it undoubtedly helped the institutes to get over the feeling that they were fiddling while Rome burned. Perhaps the greatest success of the first jam campaign, however, was to convince the government and in particular Lord Woolton that the WI was going to prove useful in this war and that they were prepared to seize the initiative.

The press picked up on the story. The
Burton Chronicle
reported on 28 September 1939 that ‘Although the separate institutes are vigorously individual bodies, the value of the centralised control exercised by the HQ of the Fed was evidenced last week when the local counties sent in a plea that preserving sugar was running
short. Headquarters managed to secure 35 tons of sugar and despatched it forthwith to country branches, thus saving hundreds of pounds worth of fruit for jam making.’

Some counties let their institutes fend for themselves in the first wave of spontaneous jam-preserving whereas others, such as Warwickshire, sprang quickly into action and organised professional canning. One or two women would undertake to do the work for individuals. Canning was an art that many members learned over the next few years but initially it was a high-level skill shared only by a few who had learned it in the Produce Guild. One member described the method of operating the machine:

‘You had to turn the handle and it had to be in neutral to start with and this is what caused so many problems. It had to be absolutely neutral to start with and it had to be turned exactly twenty times . . . I fell into it quite easily [but] the other four kept on having trouble with it.’
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The risk associated with canning was that if it were not done properly faulty cans could explode dramatically. Mrs Toosey borrowed the local canning machine as it went around the village but did not like it. Caroline recalled: ‘My mother actually preferred bottling as she once had a can of tomatoes that was blown, which was dangerous. So she bottled fruit and vegetables and these were stored in the larder, along with some canned foods. Unfortunately the larder was very damp so that the labels fell off the cans. That made for interesting meals as on Sunday nights we would have eggs with tinned vegetables. Sometimes we got eggs with plums!’

After the success of the 1939 ‘boil up’ and a result of rationing, the Ministry of Food asked the WI ‘to extend its Co-operative Fruit Preservation Scheme organized under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture’. It allocated to the federation a further
supply of sugar, which, members were told, ‘can be used for cooperative preserving of all local grown garden, orchard and hedgerow fruit supplied by members and non-members alike. Institutes that have not already signed up to the scheme are encouraged to do so through their county office so that they can benefit not only their own members but people in the wider community in their neighbourhood or village.’
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This was the call to arms. The editorial in
Home & Country
in July 1940 also dealt with the bureaucratic aspect of this work, which became for some institutes such a thorn in the flesh that they eventually backed out of the scheme: ‘A strict account of all fruit preserved must be kept for the information of the Ministry of Food, and the preserved produce can be sold through WI market stalls, WI monthly meeting stalls, or to retailers for re-sale in the normal course of trade.’
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This ruling was put in place prior to preserve rationing, which came into force the following spring and introduced greater restrictions on how jam could be sold. ‘With the help of sugar and without it, our members are going to be instrumental in saving for future use hundreds of tons of the fruits of the earth from our home gardens and orchards.’
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Sugar rationing was foreseen by the WI and in the same edition there were recipes for sugarless jam. The editor wrote: ‘Let no one think that fruit need be wasted if we are unable to get sufficient sugar to convert it into jam.’ One method was described as ‘the Old Method’ or sulphur preserving. ‘The fruit must be fully ripe and in good condition. Pick it over carefully and put it into the preserving pan. Let it cook gradually over a gentle heat until enough juice has been drawn from the fruit to prevent any danger of burning. Then boil for an hour. Never let it go off the boil, and let it boil well all over the entire surface.’

So far, so good. Now comes the rather more exciting chemistry experiment:

The jars (any shape or size will do) should be scrupulously clean and well warmed. Turn them upside down on a table. Put some sulphur in an iron spoon and set fire to it. Slip the spoon containing the burning sulphur under the mouth of each jar in turn until the glass is evenly smoked with fumes. Put the jar down quickly, mouth downwards, on the table to keep the sulphur fumes in. Now turn up a jar and fill it with the boiling fruit pulp; wave the sulphur spoon over the top of it, cover quickly with softened bladder or parchment paper. Brush over the top and sides of this covering with thin glue or paste to make it airtight. Seal each jar as it is filled, before filling the next. The pulp must be kept boiling all the time.
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This recipe was not one for the faint-hearted or those of a nervous disposition.

Another sugarless jam recipe, which was recommended for gooseberries, plums and damsons, was called Cottage Bottling. This involved cooking the fruit in large jars in the oven and then, when the fruit had shrunk down a bit, filling the jar to the brim with boiling water and covering it.

And the third method was drying. Fruit could be dried whole or, if large, cut into halves or quarters. Dried fruit became a luxury during the later years of the war but in the autumn of 1939 it was still being prepared. The WI also provided advice on drying vegetables, which would need to be steamed first and then dried. There was a great depth of knowledge in the combined membership of the Women’s Institute but no subject, except perhaps housing, elicited more comment than food preservation.

Elsie Bainbridge’s mother was resourceful when it came to making best use of what she had to hand. When sugar was in short supply she used golden syrup to make her jam, as she had used it in biscuit baking. ‘Mother’s jam was lovely and sweet and
using the syrup was a good way of making sure that she did not waste the fruit we picked in the garden and from the hedgerows.’

In addition to encouraging members to experiment with different kinds of fruit preserving,
Home & Country
also carried advertisements for preserving equipment which the NFWI had obtained at special prices for institutes. A small number of hand-sealing machines could be bought from the National Federation for £5 12s 6d (£195 today). The tins were also available for sale. Sybil Norcott’s father bought her a canning machine that she soon learned to operate efficiently. She would offer her services to the WI but also to other groups locally and that way she earned a little extra money and helped many village women to preserve for the winter. Mrs Cowley of Botley in Oxford had a childhood memory of accompanying her mother to the WI hall where she opened up as caretaker. There, in the hall, she would see rows and stacks of shiny cans ready to be used by WI members who came in to undertake this work. She also recalled the noise of the canning machine. It was a proper cottage industry and was taken seriously by both the WI and the government, however not to the extent that the Ministry of Supply would grant them additional petrol rations for distributing the jam.

The WI has remarkable records and in no area are these fuller than in the records of the preserves made in the centres formed at the request of Lord Woolton. All over the country women had taken the minister’s message to heart: ‘This war may well be decided by the last week’s supply of food. It is up to all of us now to see that our people have that last week’s supply.’
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By 13 July some 375 tons of sugar had been allocated to the preserving centres, and ‘tons of fruit that would otherwise have gone to waste have been turned into health-giving food for the coming winter’.
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The Ministry of Agriculture could hardly have hoped for a better response from the Women’s Institutes. Not only did they make jam from all surplus fruit but they also ordered thousands of extra fruit trees and bushes. Blackcurrant bushes were the favourite in many counties as they were easy to grow and produced good yields quite quickly. Apple and pear trees took longer to establish and the harvests would not be large for the first few years. As one member pointed out: ‘The government is expecting us to stock the nation’s larder but it takes time to get a decent orchard established.’
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Mrs Milburn was impressed by the quantities available at her local farm stall after the bumper crop in 1940. In August she wrote: ‘When supper was over I finished WI notices and took them out to the village, picking up six pounds of greengages at the amazing price of 2d per pound. Plums, damsons and greengages are all so very plentiful this year.’ Edith Jones had equally high yields and a particularly good crop of apples she stored not only in the granary but also in the box room, which she had tidied during her spring cleaning.

At Copyhold Farm in Bradfield the Wards grew fruit, including apples, pears, plums, cobnuts and blackcurrants. They also had a small dairy herd and a few pigs. Their aim had always been to make themselves as self-reliant as possible, so that they grew their own barley and oats for the cattle. There were days during the war when Mr Ward would get up at 5.30 a.m. to milk the cows and do a full day’s work, and then spend half the night on Home Guard duties. ‘My memory of my father in wartime was that he was always exhausted,’ said Dorcas Ward. Mrs Ward kept hens and sold the eggs; she trapped wild rabbits which she sold for their meat. The fruit was grown for commercial sale and was taken every week to Reid’s in Newbury, where the key thing was to remember to get the wooden crates back from Mr Reid for the next week’s delivery. Mrs Ward also grew fruit and vegetables for
the family and took great pride in being self-sufficient. ‘I remember the great calamity one Christmas when my mother had to buy Brussels sprouts because for some reason our own had not grown that year. It was the shame of her war.’ Jam-making was part of Mrs Ward’s annual work and she would record on the inside of the cupboard door how many pots she had made in a year. Dorcas recalled the climax being 119lbs. Her mother was always busy, and no more so than at harvest time when she would help with haymaking and organise the farmworkers’ wives who volunteered to help her in harvesting the field of blackcurrants. There was about an acre of the bushes and in good years the bushes would be sagging with fruit. Picking the blackcurrants was back-aching work so the women sat on milking stools which they moved along as they picked. In the evenings her mother would sit mending clothes, while listening to the nine o’clock news.